Archos 80 Titanium HD

Zitat: This 4:3 Android tablet has excellent build quality, but its battery life and performance are fairly average

Zitat: The good: + You’d never guess from the build quality that the Archos 80 Titanium costs less than half the price of an iPad mini - the 9.9mm thin metal frame is clean and absolutely rock solid. It’s even peppered with ports you just won’t find on an iPad, like a micro SD memory card slot so you can add your own storage, and a mini HDMI port so you can play back your movies and games on the big screen in your living room. The eight-inch screen too holds up well against the iPad mini’s 7.9-inch number. With a 1024x768 resolution, it’s not as sharp as an iPad 4 Retina Display, or the super sharp screen on the Nook HD, but it’s as good as we’ve seen for the price, and you could happily read long articles on it as well as gawp at HD video. Android itself meanwhile is as fast and feature-packed as iOS - we found the performance of the dual-core 1.6GHz processor more than enough to burn through all the latest apps and and games. Android on a tablet’s missing a few of the seamless features of iOS that you might take for granted - AirPlay streaming, for instance - but there’s almost always an alternative solution to be found on the Google Play Store (Though it’s not running Android 4.2, as Google’s Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 Android slates now do). Archos has also steered clear of gimping the 80 Titanium with bloatware: this is very close to the fresh experience Google created, just with Archos’ excellent media player app thrown in, which can handle almost any multimedia format you can throw at it. The bad: - Archos had to cut corners somewhere, and it’s clear from the images we snapped that it was saved by using poor image sensors. The two megapixel camera on the back is out and out pants, spitting out blurry, soft and muddled images. Of course, you probably wouldn’t want to take photos very often with a tablet anyway - and it still packs a front webcam for video chats too. One other minor design quibble: the frame. Apple cleverly managed to trim the sides of the iPad mini, with some extra thumb detection software to work out when you’re unintentionally gripping the screen. There’s no such feature here: instead, you get a bigger bezel all the way round. Ultimately though, it’s hard to complain about any of this for the low pricetag though. The Archos 80 Titanium is yet another solid offering from the French gadget maestro: the company’s cheap and flimsy past is well and truly behind it. If you want a petite slate that doesn´t break the bank, this may well be it. Your only consideration? Whether a smaller, slightly more expensive £159 Google Nexus 7 and its more up to date software are a better investment instead. We think plenty of people will opt for the extra space on the Archos.

Zitat: The Archos 80 Titanium proves that you can get a decent tablet without breaking the bank. Its screen isn´t high resolution, but it´s a good IPS panel which matches the iPad mini for half as much. Performance is also good, as is build quality; only the cameras let the side down. If you´re on a tight budget or want a tablet for your kids, this is a great choice.